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Expanding Worldviews: Astrobiology, Big History and Cosmic Perspectives pp 199–216Cite as

The Biological Overview Effect

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Part of the book series: Astrophysics and Space Science Proceedings ((ASSSP,volume 58))

Abstract

While gazing at the Earth from orbit, some astronauts have described a cognitive shift known as the overview effect . Here we describe an analogous biological overview effect produced by looking at the tiny twig of humanity on the tree of life . We describe the increasingly precise phylogenetic tree of all life on Earth and how it shows us our place in nature among the other eukaryotes, metazoa, vertebrates and apes. We discuss problems with this tree including the assumption of sexual isolation, purely vertical gene transmission and the dependence of the epoch of LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor ) on the completeness of the tree. We compile and present the most concise taxonomic overview of the evolution of our lineage from LUCA to humans. We conclude with a description of how the biological overview effect might help us survive.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the big bang, an oxygenated atmosphere and our parents, without whose love we wouldn’t be here.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Australian National University, Canberra, Australia

    Charles H. Lineweaver & Aditya Chopra

Authors
  1. Charles H. Lineweaver
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  2. Aditya Chopra
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Charles H. Lineweaver .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences, Birkbeck College, London, UK

    Ian Crawford

Additional information

This chapter is a revised and updated version of an article originally published in the Journal of Big History, Vol. III(3), pp. 109–122 (2019); we are grateful to the Editor of JBH, Dr. Lowell Gustafson, for permission to reproduce large sections of that article here.

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Lineweaver, C.H., Chopra, A. (2021). The Biological Overview Effect. In: Crawford, I. (eds) Expanding Worldviews: Astrobiology, Big History and Cosmic Perspectives. Astrophysics and Space Science Proceedings, vol 58. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70482-7_11

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